Senate could get another maverick Thursday, December 25, 2003 The Jan. 10 retirement of state Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, could bring to the Senate someone as independent as he is. The lone Democrat in the Jan. 20 special election is former House Education Committee chairman Paul Sadler of Henderson. The main Republican candidates are state Rep. Tommy Merritt of Longview and former Tyler Mayor Kevin Eltife. Sadler, 48, a plaintiff's attorney, started his freshman session in 1991 by lecturing his colleagues that a lottery was wrong, and then ran a brief and ill-fated campaign for speaker. But he buckled...